"Old Zhou!"
Mr. Zhou hurriedly closed the book in his hand. This was the only reading he brought from home, and it had been rolled over.
An old lady came to him and extended her hand to him cheerfully: "What interesting things are you looking at?"
Wrinkles can make people look old, but some wrinkles can also make people look soft and kind. Just as every piece of fat in some people grows "is a place", this old lady also grows every wrinkle as a place. The years probably have to be considered for a long time before they dare to carefully drop a knife on her face, so every knife is carefully carved, and she looks very pleasing to the eye.
Mr. Zhou hesitated for a while, and was a little embarrassed, and handed over the book.
The old lady glanced at him with anger and joy, and turned it over in her hand, and one of the pages automatically jumped out, because there were several "big head photos" pasted on it, which was equivalent to a thick bookmark.
The photo shows a seven- or eight-year-old boy, stuffing his head into all kinds of bizarre photo frames, grimacing at the camera while grinning.
"Is this your grandson?" The old lady sat down opposite him, posing for a long conversation.
This is where Mr. Zhou lives. In the hut, everything is white, the ceiling, the sheets, the floor... and the clothes people wear.
There is a nondescript deity painted on the wall, the posture may be extended from which Buddha statue, the robe he wears seems to be the white robe of an ancient Westerner, and he has a fashionable "corn perm" hairstyle. What exactly does the manager manage.
There are three single beds in a room, and very few personal items are covered with white sheets, leaving no trace of life. At first glance, it almost looks like a mortuary.
"It doesn't matter, everyone who just came here is like this." The old lady said slowly and softly, and naturally took the hand of Mr. Zhou, "I know, these are all things that make people feel very good, so It's also something to quit. It's like a drug, you know it's not good for you, it's only harmful, but it feels good, so those people let themselves indulge in it, but it's not real happiness. You Think about it, living with them barely, can you really fit into their family? Are you really happy?"
Mr. Zhou was a little uncomfortable being pulled by her, but he felt that "uncomfortable" was a bit hypocritical at such an age, so he smiled embarrassingly: "After all... after all... "
"After all, they are relatives, but relatives can also cause harm," the old lady said understandingly, "otherwise you wouldn't come to us for help, right?"
Mr. Zhou lowered his head.
The old lady said earnestly: "The relatives in the world are all illusory, you can feel it, you and they live under the same roof, but it seems that you have been excluded, and there is a glass wall between you, which you can see and touch. Why? This is because at our age, the time has come, and the world has begun to understand, but the children are still rolling around in the world, and your spirit is gradually detaching from them. If you are still reluctant and want to seek comfort from them, this It's just self-deception and chasing phantoms!"
Mr. Zhou said in a low voice, "... I brought up this child since he was a child."
"I know," the old lady patted the back of his hand like an angel, "I know how hard it is to quit these, otherwise you wouldn't have to travel all the way to us, right? Come, let's go, it's time for the activity. "
Speaking of this, she pulled Mr. Zhou to stand up, and a timed bell was installed in the corner of the door, like a school bell. At two o'clock in the afternoon, there was a soothing piano music. The old man like Mr. Zhou came out of his room, all dressed in fluttering white robes, looking from a distance, it looked like a collective corpse fraud scene.
All of these people greeted each other with smiles on their faces, and even held hands together, and they went downstairs in vain.
From the outside, the small building they lived in looked like a farmhouse in the backcountry, with an abandoned fish pond at the back and a field in front of the door.
People living on the second floor or above, the first floor is a hall where all three meals are eaten, similar to a collective canteen.
At this time, the big round tables were all standing up against the corners of the wall, and the chairs were arranged in a large circle. Because the green peppers were fried at noon, there was still a strong smell of food in the hall, which was a little disgusting.
The old people quickly and well-trained to find chairs and sit down, and Mr. Zhou suddenly wanted to go to the toilet - the bladder of the elderly is so unreasonable, there was no warning just now, and it will be full of urine after a while.
But at this time, an old man with gray beard came in wearing a black robe. Among the peers who looked like toilet paper, the black robe stood out from the crowd.
The "toilet paper essences" greeted the black robes one after another: "Teacher."
Mr. Zhou was embarrassed to move, and tried to lift his lower abdomen, intending to hold it for a while.
After the instructor came in, he first cared about every old man, and talked to them one by one, his expressions were very rich, as if these old people were his darlings, and a little thing happened to him, it was worth making a fuss.
After making a fuss, the instructor sat there and started the practice.
"My brothers and sisters," said the instructor, gushing endlessly, "among us, some are rich, some are poor, some are full of children and grandchildren, some are widowed and lonely, some are ill, some are healthy, We're so different. But we're different and we're here because we have one thing in common - we're all people who are nearing the end of time."
"This is a lonely journey. In the early years, there were a lot of partners, parents and brothers, but the further back you went, the more lonely you became. There were fewer and fewer people following you. The billowing smoke has been left behind. I know, you Some of them are very at a loss and can't find their worth. How heroic people are when they are young, they don't even know where to start to please their children when they are old."
"It's okay. Now please... Hold the hand of the person next to you tightly, and take a good look at the eyes of the person next to you."
So everyone was in groups of two, following the instructions, staring wide-eyed in the hall filled with the smell of green peppers.
It is stipulated that the staring time should be at least one minute, and someone next to you should pinch the time. The eyes should be sincere and not distracted.
This action is actually embarrassing and funny, like a neuropathy. Most people don't talk for a minute, and they have to laugh if they can't hold on for ten seconds.
But if the partner around him is very serious, someone like Mr. Zhou who is good at looking at people's faces and self-doubt, he will be embarrassed to laugh - not only embarrassed to laugh, but also suspect that he has a bad attitude, and he has to try to imitate the other party. .
Next to Mr. Zhou is the old lady.
The old lady's eye sockets were very deep. Although her eyelids were drooping, she didn't know how to take care of her eyes. It wasn't cloudy at all. At first, Mr. Zhou was obviously a little uncomfortable, but the old lady kept looking at him earnestly. It reminded him of his dead wife.
Suddenly, the old lady seemed to remember something sad, the corners of her mouth sank slightly, and tears began to flash in her eyes.
When people get old, they tend to become sentimental. The tears of others are sometimes like magnets, and they can easily evoke all the sad things in their hearts.
Mr. Zhou saw her tears and remembered that when his wife was seriously ill, he looked at him laboriously on the hospital bed, and he was speechless, only his eyes were praying, he understood what she meant, she was saying: I don't want to be cured, too Suffered, can't be cured. If you continue to treat it, even your coffin will be spent. What will you do in the future
She had said more than once in her life that she didn't want to be stripped naked and covered in tubes to die in the hospital in the future, but in the end, they still made her suffer great pain and died in the hospital.
This is the case with relatives. As long as the patient doesn't breathe, they are not willing to give up the rescue. It seems that if they don't torture themselves and the patient with such force, it will be a ritual and they will not feel at ease.
But he always felt that his wife was blaming him.
As soon as she left, he had no home, and even in his own house, he often felt like an old dog under a fence.
His family would sit with him only when he was eating every day, so he always ate meals together, and the whole person seemed to have degenerated into a boring rice bag.
Beibei at the dinner table is always on the phone, Dongsheng listens to the news one after another, Han Zhou is obsessed with mobile phones, his parents occasionally see him, and they will take turns to teach him "put down the mobile phone and eat well", but he eats his food again. like a war. Mr. Zhou always had trouble grasping the timing of bringing up the topic. Sometimes he raised a topic carefully, but it seemed that no one understood what he was saying, and few people answered the question. Sometimes he said stupid things, and Beibei would The chairman sighed and said, "Dad, you are wrong," and then came to correct him with a long speech, which made him feel ashamed, and he didn't dare to make a fool of himself during this meal.
They didn't want to listen to him, so he had to give them a sense of presence, but it was annoying.
Han Zhouhui shouted: "Grandpa, I don't eat that, why did you forget it!"
Beibei will directly cover the bowl: "eat it yourself!"
This is all trivial, you can't tell outsiders, it's going to make people laugh - why, what era, you still have to enjoy the "Tai Shang Huang" treatment, and when you speak, the whole family has to put down the dishes and sit upright
Isn't this unreasonable
So it all turned into tears.
What seemed like a long minute actually passed in the blink of an eye. Mr. Zhou woke up with a start and found that he was not the only one with red eyes around him.
Some people hugged his shoulders, others clapped his hands, and they all seemed to feel pity for each other. Since his wife passed away, it was the first time that Mr. Zhou found a sense of belonging in the crowd.
At this time, a few people came in the hall and brought water to the elderly in disposable paper cups.
People who have just shed tears are often embarrassed and will naturally lower their heads and drink water to relieve themselves, so no one refuses.
Because the heart is not the taste, and the mouth is not the taste, so the slight odor in the water is ignored by the elderly who are not so sensitive.
But when Mr. Zhou saw the water, he wanted to go to the toilet even more. Although he took the paper cup like everyone else, he lowered his head and took a sip.
Seeing that everyone had drank, the instructor nodded in satisfaction, told everyone to close their eyes, and began to speak in a low voice about "the world after death"—the idea was basically grafted from the teachings of major religions. , Listening to the mysterious, and thinking about it carefully, it is a bit right. Under the packaging of this idea, the content also seems to become credible.
The content of the teacher's speech is probably: after death, people will enter another world and have their relatives again. The relatives in this world are fake, temporary, and they are blind, and only relatives in the other world are real. This is the reason why many elderly people are lonely and empty even with their children and grandchildren around their knees in their later years. Relatives in another world can be sensed by themselves under the guidance of the mentor. These people gather here to find their own soul habitat.
The instructor training and guidance lasts for ten days, and the cost is 40,000 yuan per person. Of course, although everyone eats bran and pharynx every day, and there are no eggs on the table, this is mainly for "purifying the body and mind and returning to nature". It is said that the dinner table Those unremarkable vegetarian dishes are all carefully cultivated "organic vegetables", and 40,000 yuan is far from enough.
In order to prevent them from being disturbed by the outside world, the mobile phone signals are blocked. After the ten days are over, the instructor will send them home. Each person will be given a set of little red riding hoods, small flags and tourist souvenirs. Travel, deceive those "fake family members" and save society from chaos.
The "relatives" found in the training class will always contact and accompany them until the end of their lives and reunite in another world.
When the teacher was talking, the old people felt that their whole body was starting to float. The teacher's voice sounded like it was ringing in their ears, and it had to be branded into the eardrums. They felt relaxed and light for no reason, as if the soul was really The beginning of getting rid of the flesh.
But Mr. Zhou couldn't get into the state anyway today. It might be because of the urination. The mysterious and happy feeling did not appear two days ago. He was restless, and the teacher's words seemed stinky and long. Still a duck voice.
Mr. Zhou endured it for five minutes, and couldn't help but open his eyes a little, he saw a very terrifying scene-
The companions around have a bit of a demented smile on their faces. Some people have lost control of their facial muscles, and their expressions are very strange. Some people have saliva from the corners of their mouths.
Mr. Zhou was frightened into a cold sweat, and his urge to urinate weakened a little.
He didn't listen to what the instructor said, and finally got to the end of the daily routine. Under the guidance of the staff, these elderly people in white robes stood up one by one, like the one that children cut when they were doing handicrafts. Like a "hand in hand" paper figure, he stood up in a trance and followed others.
The staff who had just delivered water to them were like chasing corpses, fiddling with them one by one into the room and letting them "take a nap" to keep their spirits up.
Mr. Zhou wandered in fearfully and tried his best. Although his posture was stiff, he finally did not reveal himself. He remembered that he had done the same thing two days ago. . Although he fell asleep, his spirit was not very good. The instructor also said that this was normal and that he was tired from "spiritual wandering".
"Old Wu! Old Wu!" Pretending to lie down for a while, Mr. Zhou made sure that there was no one around, so he carefully called the roommate on the bed next to him.
Old Wu sleeps very lightly, and Mr. Zhou knows that he often suffers from insomnia at night, and others will wake him up if they roll over. But on this day, he couldn't even reach out and pat, and Lao Wu slept like a corpse.
A thought passed by, and Mr. Zhou shuddered—that glass of water!
There's something wrong with that glass of water!
"The third issue," Yu Yan looked at the flyer he received from the missing old man's house, "that means, there were similar incidents before, why didn't we know about it?"
A colleague said: "Maybe it happened more spread out, or not enough people, not concentrated like this time?"
Yu Yan frowned, and suddenly he raised his head abruptly: "Can you apply to check the situation of the city's elderly missing reports?"
Most of the reported disappearances of the elderly are the missing of the elderly with dementia, and it is particularly eye-catching with a few exceptions.
The previous incidents were indeed scattered in various areas of Yanning, not as large as this time. Most of these mentally sound old people live alone, and some have been missing for a long time until their family finds out, but the case is usually closed soon after reporting the case, because the discovery is a false alarm - the lost old man came back wearing the little red riding hood of the tour group, it turned out that he did not say hello , ran out to play by himself.
A policeman said suspiciously: "My grandmother wants to go on a trip, but the tour groups are not accepted. It's not that there is no suitable route, or that family members are required to accompany them... In the worst case, family members must sign. There are so many people over 70 years old. project?"